Anheuser-Busch INBEV - Shock Top - End of the World

Anheuser - Busch's craft brand, Shock Top, was self deemed the Official End of the World beer for the Apocalyptic non-event that was to happen on December 21, 2012. Shock Top's stellar brand team launched a massive promotion contest that resulted in a huge party for 500 winners in a 1950's doomsday bunker in West Virginia (located under the Greenbriar Resort). We were approached to create a "behind the scenes" documentary style video that would show in-house to Anhueser-Busch beer distributors what the brand was doing. The challenge was that there was no support material. The TOP SECRET bunker they had commissioned for the party, was still technically TOP SECRET. They provided only limited access to the location. It was incredibly complicated to acquire source material. We wanted the whole thing to feel like it was a real documentary, we had to tell the story of the bunker, the idea behind the event and show that there was a lot of work going on to make it happen. Then also show the massive party. However, the massive party would not be happening until a month AFTER the video was due to play at a major A-B conference. We only had a two week window from soup to nuts to get this project put to bed. We had to book shoots in Chicago, Multiple locations in St. Louis for zip lines, paintball, skydiving, etc, and coordinate a team to shoot inside of the bunker in West Virginia. That element alone took almost the entire two weeks due to the security clearances we had to obtain through a sea of red-tape, because the bunker is still considered government property and a TOP SECRET entity.
We collaborated on the script which was carefully modified along the way, and held auditions and cast two actors to portray the HISTORIAN (Joneal Joplin) and the PUBLIC RELATIONS PERSON (Laurie McConnell).